Hi all, we’ve all been chillin’ in town before and have seen that pimped out roUGe (you know, the one with all the best equips that money can buy) and been a little envious. We then check their attribute stats out and get even MOAR envious. We, being roUGe’s, then sneak of to the auction house to buy the same equips and then think “WHAT!? the elite items cost how much!!!???” Our hearts then sink as we realize that the best cloak costs 250k and we only have 65k. What is a weary roUGe to do? Fear not, your good friend WVHills is here to show you how you can ball on a budget! No, you want have the most uber stats out there but you’ll be good enough that any party will be happy to have you do a few runs with them.

There are many reasons why you may not be able to afford the best gear possible. Mine is my time constraints. I’ve got a lot of other things to do and try limit myself to an hour or less game time a day.

Disclaimer
My roUGing philosophy is we are here to do one thing: Kill things and kill them fast. Therefore, most of the decisions I make lean toward damage over survivability.

Getting Started
When I started out I purchased $20 worth of plat. I used 70 on a starter bundle that included 10 auction slots, 3 pieces of legendary gear, 50 inventory slots and 25,000 gold. The rest of the plat I used to buy the Malison pet.

***pro tip*** the legendary items you get in the bundle scale to your level so wait until your at least level 15 before you buy it.

I leveled to 10 on my own, just using the drops I recieved. When I reached level 10 a friend gave me 10,000 gold and miscellaneous pink and purple equips. You don’t need someone to do this for you but it’s nice if a friend or guildie does. The main point is do not buy ANY equips until you reach the level cap!. Its a waste of money buying pinks at level 5, 10, etc just to use them for a few days (or hours) then resell. Don’t worry about your kill count. You’re main focus should be unlocking the maps and leveling up. You can pad your kill stats once you max out and get decent gear.

***pro tip*** save ur low level purples until you can sell them in the auction house. Up until level 10 or so you can sell your low level purples for 500 gold or so. It’s not a lot but it definitely helps you come up with some gold to buy potions. Other people aren’t as smart as you so they buy equips while they level up. We’re smarter so we can make a little gold off of them.

Build
Every time I leveled I put 1 point in str and 5 in dex (none in int). If I had it to do over again I would go pure dex but either one is ok. I have 15,000 kills and 65 deaths so survivability isn’t a problem. Imo, you don’t really need to pump a lot of str in ur build as long as you have decent equips and go by my play strategy found below. Pets will help out greatly with mana so don’t put any in int.

The four skills I have are:
Smoke bomb- increased time, exploding function, 15% damage buff and 20% armor buff
Razer Shield- 20% dodge buff, clear negative effects
Aimed shot- 250% damage on critical
Nox bolt- I think I have them all unlocked in this one but will have to double check.

Leveling up
When you start out unlock all the maps up to travellers outpost. Once in traveller’s outpost keep doing watcher runs over and over until you get to level 13. Once level 13 unlock all the way to kragg and do kragg tomb runs until you get to 16.

Pets
Pets are essential in AL. I chose the dog when starting out. The chick at the end of second area will grant you a pet owl. That gave me 3 pets to use (including malision that I bought with plat).
***pro tip*** NEVER feed ur pet! Rotate them out.

I feel like the most important things a pet can give a roUGe are (in order of importance): mana regen, crit/damage (tie) and dodge. Here are the pets I recommend (once again in order): flap jack, granite, horton and malison. Horton is a 5 day reward. It took me a month to get him.

***pro tip*** NEVER buy a pet. After you unlock all maps and level up the next thing you need to do is get some pets. Most of the good pets (flap jack and granite included) drop in rook’s nest. So just do rook’s nest maps over and over again. DO NOT SKIP ANY MOBS!!! DO NOT RUSH TO BOSS!! Mobs drop pets in rooks nest so if you skip them you are cheating yourself out of possible pet drops. If you get flap jack or granite keep and train them. Sell any of the others you get. This is a good source of gold.

These aren’t the best stats but I think I spent less than 20k on the whole setup. So, all in all, I think they’re pretty good for those of us on a budget. Don’t look for the exact same gear as this, it’s just to give you a guide of the type of build you can have without spending all your gold. Also, unlike PL and DL your skill damage doesn’t seem to be tied solely to your weapon damage. In both PL and DL your skill damage is greatly influenced by the weapon you have. I had the roUGe weapon that glowed green (can’t think of the name now but I’ll edit when I can) and my damage was around 96. I then bought the mighty lifethief I have now and my weapon damage went up 25. I went to look at my skills and my skill damage only went up by 2. So, if you can’t afford lifethief don’t worry about it, you’ll still be doing the same skill damage.

Play strategy
I do either one of the following:
Charge smoke bomb, use razer shield and attack with weapon until either smoke and razer ends (you’ll have 40 dodge with razer shield plus 20% more armor and 15% more damage from the smoke bomb), or
stay out of harms way and shoot aimed shot and nox bolt from a distance.

Which of the two depends on the mobs. You have to learn the maps and use the arrow strategy if there are only 1 or 2 together. If there is a group then use the smoke/razer strategy.

Making gold
right now quests are a great source of making gold. Krybox gives either a 500 gold or 250 gold quest everyday. Also, donatello the turtle (located in ydra forest) gives out 500 gold daily quests.
be sure to do the 4 daily bard quests. Meep bop is available for 100 coins. I’m still saving up for him but he looks like he would be another excellent choice for roUGe’s.
Selling pet eggs are also a great way to earn some gold. Like I stated earlier, continue to run rook’s nest and sell any of the pets you get besides flap jack and granite.

***I’ll be updating this guide with new gear/strategies as new level caps come out***

I hope this helps some of you who are on a budget or don’t have hours and hours (or the plat) to spend farming the absolute best gear money can buy.

Guide for Dead City Expansion
This is coming in a little late but I’ve been really busy at work and church with the holidays we’ve had.

Equips:
If you have plat then buy the bundle package. You’ll get a decent weapon and stormrunner gear. If you don’t have plat you can get stormrunner gear in the auction house for really cheap. Prices flucuate but the last I checked you could get both the hood and the cloak for aroun 3000 each.

We have several choices now when it comes to weapons. The weapon that comes in the plat pack is ok but there are better ones available in the auction house for less than 20k gold. ***IMPORTANT CHANGE*** in my original post I said your skill damage does not seem to be directly related to your damage. This has changed in the dead city expansion. What was formerly called “damage” has now been changed to “dps” and a new damage stat has been added. AS YOUR DAMAGE (NOT YOUR DPS) INCREASES, YOUR SKILL DAMAGE WILL INCREASE!!! If you equip a bow you will see your damage go up but your dps will go down. If you check your skill stats you will notice your skill damage has also increased. It is my advice to PAY NO ATTENTION TO DPS WHATSOEVER. The main thing we are concerned with is DAMAGE. Most of our total damage output will come from our skill usage instead of our autoattack, that’s why skill damage should be given a priority.

I currently use 2 separate weapons: Level 21 Bane Knives of potency and the level 21 frozen bow of brutality. The damage and skill damage on these are really similar (within 1-2 skill point damage). The agile lifethief of potency is better, of course, but it will run you 10x what the bane knives will. Most prefer using the knives but I prefer the bow because of it’s added range. I’m not a fan of spamming pots all the time so I’ll use the bow up until the boss and then switch to the knives. Like I said, they both have roughly the same damage but the knives do attack faster (hence the higher dps) so bosses do die a little faster when you’re using them.

skills:
The new expansion has brought us a new skill, shadow storm shot. It’s an aoe skill but with very low damage. I tried it when respecs were free but didn’t like it. Once you reach 20 (or 21) and gear up the mobs are really easy. If you have a bow a charged autoattack will kill some of the weaker mobs and a second will finish off the others. My playstyle changes depending on the group but if theres a good tank I’ll use a bow and autoattack and charge nox bolt. If the group is decent you won’t even have to slow down any. If there isn’t a tank or he’s slow I’ll use my knives, run around to group mobs, charge smoke, charge razer and spam nox, auto attack and aimed shot. They die pretty fast this way but you’ll use a lot more pots.

***pro tip*** all the bosses (except Anne) will show a red “cone” right before a heavy attack. If you have a good warrior the red area should always appear in the direction he is. STAY OUT OF THE RED DANGER ZONE! There’s no reason to hold back on any of ur skills when at the boss. Charge smoke, charge razer, tap nox, and alternate between autoattack and aimed shot. If you use the equips I have listed above you’re going to have low int and low mana so be sure to have plenty of pots with you. Flap jack, horton and granites high mana regen will get you through the mobs but you will need some mana pots when at the boss. DO NOT NEGLECT SPAMMING AIMED SHOT! Aim shot will stack your crit and you can do crazy damage at the boss so don’t forget to keep your mana level up and spam it like crazy! Unless your tank is ultra pro or you have a rogue with better equips at some point during the boss fight you will get aggro. This means the boss will focus on you and ignore the others. That’s ok tho. When you see the red cone appear in the area u are standing in just run around to the backside of the boss and continue as you were.

After you finish them all be sure to talk to demetrius in kragg tavern everyday to get his 500 gold daily quest and Noxxar to get his 250 gold daily quest (you have to finish all the “letter to karin” quests before noxxar will give u his daily). Between krybox (either 250 gold or 500g), donatello (300 g), demetrius (500 g), Noxxar (250 g) and the story token quests you can earn 1600-1850 gold a day in a short period of time. It’s not a lot but will pay for your potions.

Passive skills:
with this expansion we now have passive skills available. You simply add available skill points to the appropriate passive skill and gain the assigned bonus. For rogues the only real choices we have are the one that grants +5 dex per skill point or the one that grants +1 crit per skill point. Don’t add any to the one that gives +1 damage. Added one in the +5 dex will give you 1.5 damage and 3 dps plus a little in crit and dodge. I decided to put 5 skill points in the +5 dex passive. That gives me 25 extra dex which equals around 7.5 damage and 15 dps. You could go with 5 crit tho. Either one will work fine.

Pets:
3 new pets are available: wrathjaw, snaggletooth, and snowball. I wouldn’t spend any plat on snowball unless you just absolutely have to have all the pets. Snaggletooth looks like he would be ok because he comes with mana regen. I have wrathjaw and he’s ok but not as good as granite, horton, flap jack or malison.

I just got the nexxus pet and he’s really good too. His arcane ability replenishes ur mana. At first it’s not that much but it brings it up a lot once u level him up. The only downside is he costs plat but if you have some plat it’s well worth the investment.

Also, meep moop is a really good choice also. He’s just a little less powerful than horton (same dex, 2 less crit, 1 less mana regen) but he is FREE! That’s right, FREE! You get him by gaining 100 story tokens (you have been doing the story tokens like we talked about before, right?).

Making gold:
One good thing about dead city is you no longer have to unlock the elite levels. Selling elite pinks is the fastest way to make tons of gold. By far the two most popular places to farm elites is brackenridge and the tower. There are several good guides floating around that detail the common procedure used for each of these areas so check those out.

4 Responses to “Arcane Legends Rogue Budget Comprehensive Guide”

I would like to ask you about bonus damage, i’m confusing about this, does it add to Damage and DPS or just for Damage? My DPS is 185 but i never reach to that number when auto attack( just ~ 80-100 with critical).